10 Star Wars Villains Who Weren't As EVIL As You Think

When he first strutted into the Skywalker Saga during Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Darth Maul looked and felt every bit like the personification of pure evil.

However, in the wake of relentlessly doing his master's bidding and cutting down a beloved Jedi Master in that flick, fans began to learn more about the sliced-in-half Sith Lord and his rather tragic backstory.

You see, Maul was actually the son of a rather powerful Nightsister leader known as Mother Talzin. And there was even a time there when Darth Sidious himself considered making her his apprentice before the time of the prequels.

That didn't end up happening, though, with Sheev Palpatine instead sensing the potential within her baby boy and stealing him away to mold the Dathomirian into his new apprentice.

Along with being dragged away from his family at a young age and manipulated into despising the Jedi Order by his horrible master, the hate-filled Maul would also later watch one of the only people he truly cared about, his brother Savage Opress, be murdered by Sidious during the Clone Wars.

He still did some absolutely diabolical things during his quests for revenge against both Obi-Wan Kenobi and Palpatine, of course, killing Dutchess Satine Kryze and blinding Kanan Jarrus over the years. 

But this consumed-by-pain dark side user never asked to be thrown onto this path, or have his life gradually destroyed by a cackling Sith Lord.